


Flood Crest

by Kicker



Series: The Jetstream Has A Lot To Answer For [2]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Guilt, Sexual Content, Smut, Someone Might Be Catching Feelings, Swearing, Uh-oh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-08-08 19:21:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7769998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kicker/pseuds/Kicker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>En route back to the Prydwen after a successful mission, Paladin Danse and his Knight are caught out by a 100-year flood.</p>
<p>It's not the first time they've been surprised by the weather. </p>
<p>This time it's definitely his fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flood Crest

"River's rising," she says.

"We keep moving," he replies.

She shrugs and averts her eyes. Agreement, of some kind, as much as he can ever expect from her. So he keeps walking. Then three little words drift forward over his shoulder, almost too quiet to be heard.

_You're the boss._

That's when he knows he's made a mistake.

He keeps on going, of course. He doesn't look around, not once. He's not going to give her the satisfaction. He knows already from the sound of her footsteps that she's not following along behind him at a steady march, paying attention to her surroundings as she should do. Her feet are dancing between the railway sleepers, up onto the rails, a few quick steps to the left, a few on the right.

As they cross the swollen river, her pace settles and steadies and he breathes a sigh of relief. That is, until she starts humming, instead.

He should reprimand her, remind her that while out in the Commonwealth, boots on the ground, she is representing the Brotherhood and should act accordingly. But he doesn't turn around. Not yet. Not until he knows for certain that his decision was correct. The river may be bursting its banks downstream, but that doesn't mean the situation is as bad upriver. They can cross the river on the railtrack, and return to the Prydwen via Diamond City instead of Cambridge. He trusts that Haylen and Rhys are smart enough to evacuate if the river gets too close to them. He knows that they'll radio for aerial assistance, should they need it.

He doesn't need to keep as close an eye on them as he does on her.

The ground is waterlogged but still relatively solid underfoot as they walk up to a small building, nestled in a tight meander of the river. It looks like an upturned storage crate. An old signal box, perhaps. It may once have been painted a bright white, but is now dark and gray with age and rain. Behind it lies a wire fence, enclosing saturated black earth and some sad, limp-leaved tato plants. Beyond that, a low wooden shack that appears to be melting into the hillside, roof sagging under its own sodden weight.

There's nobody here.

"Oberland Station," she says, drawing up alongside him. "I guess the residents must have evacuated. That's a good sign."

He ignores the sarcastic tone in her voice. He tries to, anyway.

"This place is a trash heap," he says, turning to survey the area. His eyes have been off the ground too long; a sharp clanging sound rings out and a rusted metal bucket bounces away across the railtrack. His heart is pounding even before she turns on him, anger flashing in her eyes.

"I helped them build it, actually," she says, "so keep a fucking lid on the criticism, okay?"

To tell the truth, he's actually a little surprised by her reaction. This must have been part of her work for the Minutemen. He didn't think she cared that much, for how little she talked about it. He hadn't even known until Elder Maxson had pulled him aside and informed him of her status. Reminded him to watch his tongue and behavior in front of a potentially valuable ally.

The warning had come a little late.

"My apologies," he says. "But it does appear to be abandoned. We should keep moving."

She falls behind again as he sets back off down the railtrack. Perhaps he should consult her, she may have more information, but he feels like being the stubborn one for once. She's not the only one who knows the lay of the land in the Commonwealth, after all.

And she has been wrong before.

They keep on walking for a little while, but the ground is ever more saturated, and the river ever higher against its banks. The water rushes loudly alongside them, dragging dead branches and tyres and all manner of debris along with it. He steps around a set of scrubby bushes that conceal the path ahead, only to find that the railtrack and indeed all the ground ahead is submerged.

_Fuck._

He stands and looks out over the water. He tries to remember his map, if there had been any elevation patterns marked on it, some indication of how deep the water might be. Its muddied brown color and rippling surface tells him how fast it's moving. Even with a fusion core at - and he checks, again - 72%, he doubts he'll get far.

She steps up beside him once again, and a slight tremor runs through his armor. He looks down to see her grabbing onto his arm, the water already at calf-height for her, and apparently tugging her off-balance. As much as he'd like to keep moving, it's not safe, for either of them.

"This isn't going to work," she says, echoing his thoughts. "I think we should go back to Oberland."

He's about to agree and admit his error when she continues, with a sharp look up at him. "As much of a trash heap as it may be."

He bites back the apology and sets his mouth in a firm line.

  
The clouds are massing again as they reach the station, making the area seem even more dismal and dark than it had before. He checks the time; barely even afternoon and yet it seems like it's late in the evening already.

"I never got around to putting in an armor station," she says, starting up the steps, "so you're just going to have to bring it up and ditch it in a corner so it doesn't get washed away."

He feels a rush of incredulity. No armor station? He glances around and sees no turrets, either. Does she want to protect this place or not?

Whether he says it out loud or not, she seems to read his thoughts.

"Look at it," she says, drily. "It's a shithole. Who'd even bother to attack it?"

The room at the top of the signal box is tiny, with barely room enough for a mattress on the floor and a table against the opposite wall. The roof is solid, and wooden boards have been nailed up inside the broken windows, so the place is at least dry. Mostly. But it really is very small. If he remains in the suit - and he is tempted to do so - he'll most likely tread on her feet. But she's already pulled off her boots, increasing the likelihood of serious injury.

He wonders, briefly, how many broken toes Knight-Captain Cade has had to deal with in his time. Must be hundreds by now. Then he angles himself into the far corner of the room and hits the release on his suit. His own feet find the floor, first one, then the other.

When he has his balance, he turns around to find her watching.

Again.

"So," she says, her face calm and free of expression. "It's happening again."

He takes a breath and moderates his response. "Inclement weather conditions have hampered our progress," he says. "That's all."

The corner of her mouth twitches up into something that's not quite a smirk. It's close enough to one to annoy him. He turns back around to his suit and hits the release button again, ducking away as it closes in on itself.

She agrees with a hum. "Inclement weather indeed," she says. "Have I ever told you I love the way you phrase things? I wish I had such a grip on the language."

He's not sure if she's complimenting or mocking him, but either way he feels a heat rising in his cheeks that he hopes is not visible. "We should not be being caught out like this," he says.

She leans on the edge of the table, ignoring him, contorting herself to peel her wet red socks from her feet.

"It's unprofessional," he says, pursuing his point. Not that he knows what that is, exactly.

She snorts. "Come on, Danse," she says, "we haven't even gotten to the unprofessional bit yet."

_Yet_ , she says. _Yet_ , as though it's a foregone conclusion. Yet, as though _he's_ a foregone conclusion.

"Twice," he says. "It's happened twice."

Perhaps he is.

First had been the lodge, up in the north of the Commonwealth. A storm that she'd underestimated. And some home-brewed alcohol that he'd underestimated.

Then when they'd returned to the airport, the winds still high, it had been too late to take a vertibird back up to the ship. Given a choice between huddling up by the scattered parts of Liberty Prime or in a shack set up in an old departure lounge for passing caravans, they'd headed for the smaller of the two.

The one with a lockable door.

That had been a wordless affair, clothing pulled open and pushed aside. The last chance, or something. It had seemed to surprise even her. It hadn't helped him move on, but it marked the end of it. He had been planning to request a reassignment for her, to recommend that she be placed in another squad. Not so that he would be free to pursue anything with her, it would still be highly inappropriate. Just to get her away from him. Maybe then he could stop _thinking_ about her all the goddamned time.

But Elder Maxson had sent them out again. Together. _You seem to make a good team_ , he'd said. _And you know how important she is to us. I trust you, Danse. Don't let me down._

"Oh," she says, bringing him back to the present. "I considered the second to be a continuation of the first. But okay."

He bites his tongue so hard he can almost taste blood in his mouth.

The she looks him right in the eye as she unbuttons her pants and begins to remove them. They're soaked up to the knees in floodwater, it's not supposed to be an enticing manoeuvre.

But goddamnit, if it isn't.

"I get it," she says, and as she pulls down those pants her hands run down her thighs, her thumbs obviously brushing against her own skin. She drapes them on the corner of the table and hops up onto it herself to sit cross-legged. "Once, an accident, twice, unfortunate, three times? That's a pattern. Or would be, if it were to happen again. But it won't. You have my word that I will not touch you."

She holds up her hands, splaying the fingers out wide. Then she places them flat on the surface of the table, next to her bare thighs.

"That's not..." he starts, but it seems useless to continue. "Never mind."

He continues to move around the room, trying to make sure they're set up for the night. Afternoon. Whatever goddamned time it is. He picks up her pack, moving it away from his, noting a muffled clink of glass and sound of liquids within it. Still carrying alcohol, despite his recommendations to the contrary. He pulls his notebook from his own pack, unfolds the map tucked within its pages, now soft and grimy and falling apart along the creases. If the river has risen downstream, and has overflowed the land upstream, that means this must be an island.

He's trapped on an island with her.

Nobody knows where they are.

_Get a grip_ , he tells himself.

He must look over his shoulder at her too many times, because she cocks her chin at him. "Would you prefer I didn't look at you, either?" she asks.

"Don't be absurd," he says.

But she closes her eyes anyway, her hands still flat on the table beside her.

It's useless to look at the map any longer. It may have stopped raining, but it seems unlikely that the waters will recede any time soon. They'll simply have to wait it out. Again.

In the absence of anywhere more suitable, he sits down on the mattress, leaning against the wall. It's damp, and cold against the back of his head. His hands clench into fists, irritated at the delay to their progress.

He counts under his breath. Anger will get him nowhere.

And for someone who spends most of her time swinging a baseball bat and setting fire to things, she seems very calm. She doesn't seem comfortable, however. She's moving her head from side to side, flexing her neck. She's curling and uncurling her toes, trapped as they are tight beneath her knees. After a little while, a smirk turns up one side of her mouth, nonetheless. It gets wider and wider still, until she lets out a laugh that she attempts to stifle.

He can't help but assume it's for his benefit.

"What?" he asks.

"Nothing," she says, but she's still doing it, her eyes still closed tight.

"Open your eyes," he says. "And stop being ridiculous."

Now her mouth widens into a true smile, teeth bright even in this gloomy atmosphere.

It's _infuriating_. This is a serious situation, and not the time for jokes, or games. He gets to his feet, and crosses the room to stand before her. Anyone else he'd order to get up.

_You stand right here in front of me and you start showing me some respect, right now._

But he knows that won't work. Neither will the appeal to her better nature. He tries, anyway, and accordingly his line of questioning comes out more petulant than anything else.

"Why are you always like this?" he asks.

"I'm not," she says, the picture of wounded innocence. 

"Oh," he says. "Your Minutemen friends don't get this treatment?"

She doesn't reply.

"Just me," he says.

She doesn't reply.

He sighs. "Outstanding."

"What's the matter?" she asks. "Don't you want to feel special?"

He looks down at her upturned face, the glow in her cheeks, her lips just slightly parted.

_Yes. I do._

Her eyes snap open, and there's a warmth in them that sends a jolt of electricity running right down his spine.

_You are._

He leans down into a kiss, and for a moment, he's afraid. Afraid that he's wrong, afraid that he's misread her, afraid that she never meant what she said back in the lodge. A moment when the only contact between them is the side of his nose against hers, and the slightest, gentlest hint of her lips against his.

A moment that's so thrilling he doesn't even care if she does reject him.

She doesn't, though. She kisses back. Her tongue runs along his lip, delicate and sweet. If he leans back, she pushes herself up on her hands to stay with him.

"I think this counts as touching," he says, trying to suppress his smile.

"Shut up," she says, gently.

He runs his fingers through her hair, strokes them down the side of her neck, but she still doesn't move her hands from their position on the table.

He looks at them. Pointedly.

"What?" she says. "You want me to break my word?"

"You did already open your eyes," he says.

"Very true," she says, and before he knows it she's curling her finger through the zip of his flight suit and dragging it down.

They strip each other with slow and definitely not practiced hands. That would still be inappropriate. He slides his hands around her waist and pulls her toward him, pulls her thighs hard against his.

Thighs. That's no good. He wants her now, right now, like _this_ but the table is too low.

"Legs," he says.

She wraps them around him and lets him hoist her up, his hands on her ass, her heels pressing against the back of his thighs. She drapes her arms around his neck and looks at him expectantly. He knows that she can feel his arousal, currently pressed in between them in a very distracting manner.

He turns and takes the two, three paces toward the wall. He knows it's cold, and though he's not annoyed with her any more, he does take some pleasure from the sharp intake of breath when he leans her against it. Maybe that's why he holds her there for a moment without doing anything. Or maybe it's because working out how to balance and hold and fuck is harder than he thought.

"Asshole," she says, with a smile and a helping hand.

It's not quite what he was expecting, but one bonus is that she stays where he's put her for a change. Not that he should be used to what she does in a situation like this, not at all. He shouldn't already know what it feels like to be between her thighs, or the sound she makes as he enters her, or the way she bites her lip as he does it.

He shouldn't be doing this at all.

"Hey," she says, her fingers scratching over the back of his neck and up into his hair.

He leans his head back, just enough to look her in the eyes.

"You're thinking too loudly," she says. "Stop it."

Maybe she's right. But pointing it out doesn't help, so he digs the tips of his fingers into her thighs, and shifts his weight against her.

"That's more like it," she says, with a sharp intake of breath. "Now fuck me like you want to break this wall down."

He doesn't particularly want to think about that eventuality, toppling down onto the sodden ground below in a cloud of brick dust and plaster. For a moment it worries him, but the wall does feel fairly sturdy, and though he moves slowly at first, he finds a rhythm that works, that lets him have what he wants, feel what he wants, and that she doesn't seem to dislike.

Her hands reach out for purchase against the cracked plaster of the wall but find none, returning instead to clutch around his shoulders. Nails dig into his skin, a delicious counterpart to the sweet friction on his cock. Her thighs grip tightly around his hips and he knows he can trust her to hold herself, so he begins to worry less about keeping her up and more about chasing the release he'd told himself he didn't want. And he finds it, too soon, the pleasure flooding his body, all of it far too fleeting.

As the sensations ebb away, he leans his forehead against the wall, feeling his arms begin to tremble and his legs to become weak under the weight of the both of them. Her heart beats fast against his, her breath soft and warm over his ear. He lets her down, her weight transferred away from him, first onto one foot, then the other.

Sated, and somewhat relaxed, he drops himself down onto the mattress again. He lets his shoulders lie flat against the wall, feeling the cold run through him, meeting with the twin forces of guilt and doubt that are already already rising in his stomach. He tries to ignore them, watching her instead.

Her fingers are twitching, snapping, as though she'd like to light a cigarette, but the room is too small and too poorly ventilated for that. She kneels down, rifles through her bag and pulls out a bottle. She uncorks it and takes a sip, closing her lips around the neck of it. After a few moments the scent diffuses through the air and reaches him. Cherries. The brandy, from the lodge. She'd joked about keeping it. For a special occasion.

He dismisses the thought.

She stands, and seems to be peering out through the gaps in the boarded-up window, the bottle held loose in her hand. In the soft light her expression is inscrutable. She glances back at him, and he holds out his hand. She offers him the bottle and he takes it, but it's not what he was after, so puts it beside him on the mattress and extends his hand again.

This time she understands and takes it, lets him draw her down into his lap, between his legs. He wraps his arms around her, one around her shoulders, one around her waist, and rests his cheek against her neck.

What two soldiers get up to in the field is their own business. He's used to turning a blind eye, it's not exactly unusual. He's almost certain, in fact, that Haylen and Rhys have had encounters of that nature. But him? A Paladin? He should be above it. He should not be grasping at flimsy excuses to grasp at her. Not an outsider, and certainly not one as volatile or important to their mission as her.

He takes a deep breath, and forces out the words.

"This can't happen again," he says.

"Can't predict the weather," she says, resting her chin on his arm, curling her fingers around it.

"That's not what I meant," he says. "And you know it."

She lets out a soft sigh in reply, one he hopes is acknowledgement of his statement.

It's not.

"Perhaps we should stop building all this artillery," she says, "and develop some radar stations instead. Weather forecasting is far more important than defence, after all."

"What are you talking about," he says. "What artillery?"

"Oh, nothing," she says.

Her skin is warm and soft against his, her back resting against his chest.

"If you want me to go," she says, "you have to _let_ go."

He doesn't let go.

She shifts a little, but if it's an attempt to move away it is pleasingly half-hearted.

"You'll be cold," he says.

"I will," she says. "And unsatisfied."

And that would hardly be fair.

He strokes his fingertips over her stomach, over the scars that cross it, over the faded blue ink just below her ribs that spells out words he hasn't asked her to translate for him. He suspects she would refuse, anyway. He walks his fingers downwards, down between her legs.

"Oh," she says.

Soon her hand joins his, directing him, guiding him, touching herself. She shivers under their combined touch, her head resting against his shoulder. Her other hand seeks out the back of his neck, and she turns her face around to snatch the edge of a kiss. She tastes of brandy and rain, and it all mixes with the scent of smoke that always seems to linger on her skin.

"More," she says, barely louder than a whisper.

He slips his fingers inside her. Her head falls back, her mouth open, and she gasps out her appreciation. She lifts her hips towards his hands, _their_ hands. He can follow with the waves that pass through her, half feeling them himself as she tenses and her whole body alternately coils tight like a spring, then loosens.

She shudders, violently, says words he doesn't understand. Except one.

_Danse_.

She falls back against his chest, with the softest laugh he's ever heard fall from her lips.

"Fuck," she says, after a few moments.

He holds her again, pulling her close, wrapping his arms around her. She's soft and relaxed, her knee touching lightly against his, her hand dropping down to rest on his thigh. As her breathing slows, the flush of pink over her chest begins to fade and for a moment he wonders if she might even be asleep.

Then she turns her pale eyes on him and smiles, a smile that he feels in his chest as well as sees with his eyes.

It won't happen again. It can't.

But while he does have her, he's not about to let her go.


End file.
